Heat and charge transport in nanostructures: Interference, AC-driving, environment, and feedback

The fulfillment of Moore’s law, the doubling of number of transistors in integrated
circuits every two years, has led to the miniaturization of chips to
the nanoscale from the initially centimeter size transistors to nowadays,
with transistors down to 1 nm . As a consequence, faster and smaller components
for computers and smartphones are available nowadays. As good
as this sounds, this improvement in performance and size comes with some
associated problems since rapid operation means a stronger heat dissipation
in the system. To overcome these problems one needs to characterize not
only the charge current that is used in these systems but also to study its
relation to heat currents and how they are dissipated. The investigation of
these currents is not an easy task since in such small systems quantum effects
start to play a crucial role and many new phenomena emerge. The aim
of this thesis is to shed some light in this field by studying various nanoscale
systems and characterizing their response to electrical and thermal forces in
terms of charge and energy flows.